Philadelphia Police Seize 2,000 Books; Authors Protest

The Authors League of America and the American Booksellers Association issued a protest of two raids, in which the Philadelphia Police Department’s vice squad stormed bookstores and seized about 2,000 books that authorities alleged were “salacious.” The books included the The Wild Palms by William Faulkner, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949, and Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell.

A play based on Caldwell’s novel Tobacco Road was banned in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on January 11, 1936. Over the years, seven of William Faulkner’s novels were banned or challenged across the U.S.